KAMLOOPS – The public is invited to hear how Peter Armstrong, President, Founder, Chief Executive Officer and a principal of the Armstrong Hospitality Group, owner and operator of the Rocky Mountaineer, Thompson Hotel and Two River Junction Theatre, has, over a 15-year period, grown Rocky Mountaineer Vacations from a small entrepreneurial dream to a successful company with over 400 employees and sales representation in 18 countries.
Armstrong, 52, who has won, among many other distinctions, the Queens Jubilee Award for Community Service, the Canadian Venture Capitalists Entrepreneur of the Year, National Award for Customer Service Entrepreneur of the Year, the Entrepreneur of the Year, Tourism/Hospitality, and Entrepreneur of the Year, National Certificate for Exceptional Service, started his first tourism business, Spotlight Tours, at the age of 21.
This led to a position as partner and president of Gray Line of Vancouver, which he then privatized, the first such privatization of government assets in British Columbia. In 1989, Armstrong sold his shares in Gray Line and assembled a team to successfully bid on the fledgling Rocky Mountaineer service that was being operated by Via Rail, a subsidized federal crown corporation.
When, a year later, the federal government privatized the daylight tourist service that was introduced in 1988, the Great Canadian Railtour Company, the Armstrong Company, was awarded the rights to the service, developing a two-day all daylight journey through Canada’s West and the Rocky Mountains. This original two-day rail tour is now just one of the 70 independent vacation options that include city shops, sightseeing tours, rail and drive programs, and year-round destination-based vacations.
Fifteen years after it was founded, the Rocky Mountaineer hosted a record 77,000 guests and GCRC was awarded the rights to operate new tourist trains on additional CN and former BC Rail routes.The following year, the company acquired Gray Line West (GLW), an already successful motorcoach operation based in Banff, Whistler, Vancouver and Victoria, and this year launched the new Rocky Mountaineer Fraser Discovery route between Whistler, B.C. and Jasper, Alberta, and the Whistler Mountaineer, a three-hour train trip between North Vancouver and Whistler along the famous “sea to sky” scenery of Howe Sound, the Coastal Mountains and Garibaldi Provincial Park.
Armstrong’s talk, part of the university’s MBA Lecture Series, will be held in Room 1020 of TRU’s International Building at 4:30 pm Monday, Nov. 20. Admission is free
For more information, please contact Margaret Hohner at 377-6176.
